“Charges placed.”
“Overwatch has a target. Waiting to fire.”
“Tango in sight.”
My squad has been deployed to prevent a hostage execution outside a convenience store. Every part of my plan is executed simultaneously: breaching charges rip through the fence out the back, the sniper drops their target, and the rest of my squad move in. Flashbangs and fragmentation grenades detonate to stun the defenders and they are dispatched with ruthless efficiency. I flush the remaining enemies out of the back rooms by the breaching party and the rest are quickly mopped up.
Total elapsed time: 16 seconds.
This is Door Kickers 2: Task Force North, the sequel to the hit tactics game Door Kickers which was released back in 2014. Initially, it looks fairly similar to its predecessor. There has been an engine upgrade, but overall the gameplay looks quite similar, which I don’t consider being a bad thing at all as the gameplay in the original was already very tight.
Ditch the Civvies, We Are Oscar Mike
In a major departure from the first game, Door Kickers 2 ditches the SWAT teams and instead puts the player in charge of a US Army Ranger squad deployed to the fictional region of Nowhereaki in the Middle East. There are supposed to be other playable squads added later, but no word on what those will be yet. Throughout the 32 missions currently offered, the player will undertake a variety of tasks that increase in complexity, from hostage rescues to VIP extractions to straight up kill missions. There’s also an online co-op mode, a random mission generator, and a level editor to be added down the track.
Everything but the Kitchen Sink
The gameplay in-mission is similar to the original Door Kickers but with an altered, expanded toolset and a bit more freedom in how the player can accomplish a mission. Given that the player is now controlling US Army Rangers instead of a SWAT unit, more lethal and destructive items are available like fragmentation grenades or wall charges. No longer are your troops restricted to breaching doors- now if there’s a wall they can make a door! A new class has been added in the sequel as well- The support class. Equipped with light machine guns as their primary weapon, the support class is handy for laying down suppressing fire on an area. Each class has its own specific primaries: besides the support class the assault has SMGs and assault rifles, the marksman class has semi-automatic long-range rifles and the grenadiers get assault rifles with underslung grenade launchers. There are also new enemy types! The insurgents your troops face off against now include suicide bombers and RPG-wielding special units among their ranks.
Embrace the Suck
The campaign does a good job of easing new players into Door Kicker 2’s gameplay. I found the first three chapters to be fairly easy, but in the fourth chapter, there’s a rather steep climb in difficulty, and during the last couple of chapters that steep climb becomes a sheer wall. I started to struggle a bit around halfway through the Extreme Rescues chapter and have yet to finish the last chapter at the time of this writing.
In the meantime, I’ve been digging into the random mission generator to sharpen my skills.
That about wraps up what’s currently available in the game as it stands today. So what can players expect to be added leading up to full release? According to the Door Kickers 2 Steam page, the additions are expected to be as follows:
- 100 Single player missions
- 20 missions made to be played in co-op
- Mission and location generator
- Steam Workshop support
- 3-4 additional playable SOF units and up to 8 soldier classes
- Over 60 weapons and useable items
- Night missions, infiltration, disguises and undercover operations
- More enemy and NPC types including disguised insurgents and Third-actor spec ops and agents
- Additional locations and environments
Door Kickers 2 is a sequel done right, so far: it takes what was great from the first game (in this case, the addictive real-time with pause tactical gameplay) and builds on it some welcome new features. Currently, it does feel like it’s unfinished in places, but what is available is already very playable and a lot of fun. Even as it is, the game is well worth checking out but down the track, as the new content is added, it could be a must-have for any tactics fan’s library.
Shaun is eXplorminate’s new tactics eXpert, having expressed an immense love and fondness for the genre. His passion motivated Rob to feature tactics games more prominently here! Look forward to seeing more coverage from him and eXplorminate as a result.